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The 17 weirdest gifts the Queen has been given

By Clare Bennett

21 Apr 2017

Friday 21 April 2017

Getty Images/ Rex Features/ Alamy

If you're thinking of getting the Queen a present for her 91st birthday today, here is a list of things she has already received, just to make sure you avoid doubling up. You don't want your present to end up in the royal present drawer.

Food and Drink

'What about something to keep all that booze she owns cold?' you might be thinking. You're too late. President Pompidou of France gave the Queen a huge wine cooler shaped like a grasshopper in the Seventies. When you rotated its wings, it turned into a drinks table - you'll struggle to top that. She was also given a model of the Brandenburg Gate by Germany, made of marzipan - let's hope she did not confuse it with the Lego Tower Bridge she was also once given and take a bite out of the wrong one. Or the glass cupcake from the Lord Lieutenant of Merseyside. #ouch

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Animals

On her 18th birthday, the Queen's parents gave her a corgi called Susan, the founder of the Corgi House of Windsor and matriarch to the 10 generations that have followed. Despite the fact that in her time Susan was said to have sunk her teeth into, among others, the royal clockwinder, a Grenadier guard, a detective, a policeman and several servants, the Queen was immensely fond of her. She came on honeymoon with the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh, and when she died, the Queen personally designed her gravestone. Other animal presents include two sloths from Brazil, two black beavers from Canada and an elephant called Jumbo from Cameroon (all of them ended up in London Zoo), so don't get her any of those.

Clothing

Although Prince Harry revealed that 'most of the Royal Family are Arsenal fans', the Queen has previously been presented with a Brazilian football shirt. This may come in handy when we don't make the knockout stages of the 2018 World Cup and, like the rest of us, the Queen decides she must have some kind of Brazilian connection in order to keep interested in the tournament. And don't get her a pair of cowboy boots - the Americans already did that.

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Horses

Everyone knows the Queen loves horses. She was given a black mare called Burmese by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, which she rode for the Trooping of the Colour for nearly 20 years - and later another horse, which she named Sir John, after Canada's first prime minister, Sir John Macdonald. Horse-related presents probably go down a treat - which is presumably why Irish breeder Christina Patino gave the Queen a bag of horse semen worth £5,000, courtesy of her stallion Big Bad Bob. Yes, you read that right: Big Bad Bob.

Random

'But I want to be original,' you're now saying, 'What if I give her a sword made of shark's teeth?' No. The Pacific Island of Kiribati has already done that. 'A box of mud?' Sorry - the Wellington Barracks got in before you with a silver box of mud from the battlefields of the First World War. 'I know! A bag of purple salt!' Sure - it can sit alongside the other bag of purple salt she got from the British Virgin Islands. 'OK, fine - I bet no one's ever given her a history of accountancy in Ireland!!!' You lose. The Irish did, obviously. 'This is too hard - I might as well just give her a packet of fairy dust or something.' At last - something she doesn't have. Unless she went off with the one given to the Prince of Wales by a member of the public on his trip to Australia.